tell me a joke

The other day, I was playing around on my iMac and discovered that LION features "VoiceOver", part of its Universal Access services.

One of the voices, Samantha, sounds just like Siri. ( Listen to "Samantha")  (listen to a really interesting use of Siri)

I was playing with the commands. You press a button and say stuff, and the iMac does different things.
I'd forgotten how much fun this is, and how it can be truly useful. In 1992, we got a MAC LC, and Josh and Sam were able to do all kinds of things with our computer, because the Talking Moose would do many of the same things that VoiceOver could, if they needed help reading window contents. Plus it was highly entertaining.

I used to ask the Moose to tell me a joke. He told terrible knock knock jokes. And so does Lion's Samantha. (My little Samantha, the bride to be, tells much better knock knock jokes.)

So, the other day, I had to drive from Evanston Illinois, up to Racine Wisconsin. I have built in GPS in my Prius and she understands verbal commands. I wanted to see the entire route. I couldn't figure out how to do it. She showed me all the Thai restaurants. Then the Golf courses. Then a few other things. She does "hide icons" on command, at least she understands that one thing.

In frustration I said "Tell me a joke." That trigged the "help" command and she read me a list of common commands, one of which might have been "show entire route". Whatever it was, I remembered long enough to see the entire route. A half hour later, I couldn't remember, because driving in the rain, with half of your quilt stuff and wondering where to get goodies to get on the way to the quilt retreat does not go well with trying to remember weird bits of information. But I remembered "tell me a joke", which gets me to the help screen.

The next day, on the way to the local quilt shop, I tried again because the route there was very windy but on the way home it was easier, so I wanted that easier route. But we were there by the time I got her to show me the entire route.

Sometimes when I am alone in the car, I swear at her, and she goes to the next CD in the cd changer. "Next CD" also works.

Anyway, I don't think the Prius does tell knock knock jokes. I really wish it did.

I think it won't be long before cars come with an optional mount for an Ipad, one that would also hide it. You'd pull up a screen... wait, I bet they already make that.